


You're Here at Last (1944)

by orphan_account



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alma mater, Alternate Universe - Historical, Chicago (City), F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 06:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17017746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Why, why was I letting her drag me back to campus for this holiday mixer?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WackyGoofball](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WackyGoofball/gifts).



> A Secret Santa gift for dear Wacky. Her three words were stockings, cold, and stars. This one, I'll leave up from love, with apologies for its issues.

“Dammit!” I muttered through gritted teeth as my roughened knuckle snagged on my stockings. These days, a ladder in one’s hose was a calamity—but then again, nobody would be paying attention to mine once they espied my general person.

“Language, darling!” Margaery tittered, as she stuck her head ‘round the powder room doorframe and puckered her bowed Victory Red lips into a perfect moue.

“As though you don’t swear like a sailor, Marge,” I scoffed.

“Well, it does come in handy, sometimes,” she winked, and went back to her ablutions.

Why, _why_ was I letting her drag me back to campus for this holiday mixer?

Of course I knew _why_ : because her grandmother—my past and future advisor, Professor Olenna Tyrell—did not so much extend invitations as issue summonses, no matter how exquisitely worded.

 _But_ women more than outnumbered men in the College three years into the war, even with the new V-12 Navy officer programs. Mathematically, my attendance was not necessary. And I’d already graduated this past May.

“Stop scowling, darling—I can hear you. Finish dressing and let me see to that gorgeous face,” Marge hollered.

Gorgeous, _snort!_

Unlikely as it seemed, Marge-the-Maxfield-Parrish-Beauty and I, Lummox, were bosom friends, having gone to grammar school at St. Thomas Apostle together, then to Lab, then onto the College. I was decidedly unconventional yet from a modest middle-class home; she was from a fabulously wealthy yet decidedly unconventional old Chicago family. I practically grew up in the Tyrell manse in Kenwood, a fair walk or short bus ride from the narrow two-story limestone my father and I shared in Garfield Park.

So, OK—Tyrells say “you’re going to the mixer,” I go to the mixer. Olenna had been keenly insistent. Hell, she’d even taken us to Marshall Field’s to approve and purchase the dress and the shoes—as I rarely bought shoes, I had the requisite coupon—and treated us to potpies under the vast Tree in the Walnut Room. (Even in war, some traditions had to be maintained, it seemed.) The deceptively simple indigo frock had a square neckline that made the most of my broad shoulders and prominent collarbones—a far cry from my usual comfortable dungarees or coveralls of late.

Anyway, I knew Marge couldn’t be making fun of me when she said such things about my visage, given that she’d had a front-row seat to my various humiliations over the years—and had even decked a few deserving cads on my behalf. ( _She_ had the element of surprise. They usually saw me coming, but I knocked them into the dust nevertheless. Ha.)

Still, I was never sure what to make of the queer look she’d give me when I’d flush and stammer whenever Marge or her Gran would say I was ‘handsome’ or ‘marvelous.’ She and Olenna would usually utter some response like, “Ohhh, _how little you know_ , dear,” or vaguely remark that they could “see something others didn’t” while thoughtfully patting me on my square, masculine jaw.

My square, masculine jaw that needed to get on with the womanly war-paint and this stupid social engagement. I sighed and stepped into Margaery’s powder room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Navy V-12 program, which had very interesting curriculum at the University of Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-12_Navy_College_Training_Program
> 
> St. Thomas the Apostle: My paternal grandmother and her older sister went to school here. My great aunt graduated from the University of Chicago a little before this Brienne would have. They grew up in Washington Park. I still have my grandmother’s class ring from St. Thomas. http://stapostleschool.com/about/our-history/
> 
> The University of Chicago Lab School: https://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/about-lab
> 
> Kenwood: https://www.choosechicago.com/neighborhoods/south/kenwood/
> 
> Garfield Park: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-blogs/west-garfield-park-past-and-present/381522a4-1a3a-4070-930c-9c1536dc8de2
> 
> The old Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s on State Street (my grandmother and great aunt also took us here, a grand tradition): http://wendycitychicago.com/the-walnut-room-the-great-tree-at-marshall-fields/


	2. Chapter 2

It was bitterly cold that evening, even though there was no snow. Winds gusted right up the Midway off Lake Michigan.

December 16, 1944.

The Tyrells’ driver had pulled the ‘39 Chrysler Royal sedan up to the curb in front of the warmly lit Ida Noyes Hall, but the air was stinging even for the few steps it took to get to the entry. The evening sky was clearer than usual, with bright stars.

The porter inclined his head in welcome. “Miss Margaery, Miss Brienne.”

“Sandor,” acknowledged Marge with her signature wink and a handclasp.

“Hullo, Sandor,” I smiled, and the giant returned it with a fortifying gray gaze.

Marge and I made our way to the cloakroom and then proceeded up the grand oaken staircase to the third-floor assembly room and theater. As I had calculated, there were at least three women to every man, but there were more men present than I’d expected.

“ _Stop_ fiddling with your bandeau. Your hair looks _lovely_ ,” Marge hissed.

“If you _do_ say so yourself,” I shot back, and she grinned. I don’t know how she’d done it, but by the time we were in college she had worked out an easy care-and-styling routine for me that had my blonde mop looking decent most days and even downright presentable à la Veronica Lake on these wretched occasions.

Into the long wainscoted room and past its colorful murals she glided, immediately beset with admirers among the aspiring officers. She did look exceptionally gorgeous. The emerald-green wool suited her coloring, and the matching little perch hat looked well with her rich auburn hair.

I grabbed a cup of coral-hued punch and sidled to the edge of the familiar room toward the gigantic windows, surveying the room from my preferred post.

I was not surprised to note the university’s athletic director, Bronn something-or-other, frolicking about as Krampus. God(s) only knew what vile language he was spouting in that guise given how deliciously vulgar he was ordinarily. And of course there were real candles flickering on a beautiful blue spruce. A phonograph was set up on the small stage with an orange crate of 78s for the dancers to get through. The music crackled over the PA.

I turned to the window to admire some constellations we could rarely see in the city and took a sip of punch. _Gah,_ but I missed champagne. Those Tyrells had ruined me. This was cheap grain alcohol, suspicious fruit juice, and flat ginger ale. I sputtered in my typically unladylike manner.

“Tasting stars?” queried a familiar, sarcastic, sonorous voice from just over my shoulder.

 _Oh Fuck_ , I thought, as I was not often wont to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1939 Chrysler Royal Sedan: https://www.imcdb.org/v297725.html
> 
> Ida Noyes Hall. Spent a lot of quality time here, including a step-aerobics class amid the wainscoting. Around 1997, students at the U of C started a swing dance club that meets here. Fitting!  
> https://architecture.uchicago.edu/locations/ida_noyes_hall/
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Noyes_Hall
> 
> Online exhibit: On Equal Terms: Educating Women at the University of Chicago. https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/exoet/
> 
> Dom Pérignon’s famous quote is fake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_P%C3%A9rignon_(monk)
> 
> One of my dearest friends from the University of Chicago hails from the Black Forest region of Germany. He always has real candles burning on his Christmas trees.


	3. Chapter 3

In a pounding heartbeat, I squared my already rectilinear shoulders, set my eyes to steely, and turned to face _him_. What was he even doing here?

“Professor Lannister,” I acknowledged politely. The man had driven me crazy for my last two years in the College. ‘Socratic method,’ he’d called it. If part of me had missed his near-constant jibing these past six months, well, I had mostly ignored it.

“ _Miss_ Tarth,” he replied insouciantly.

In truth, I was surprised I hadn’t marked his approach—the tap of his elegant Irish blackthorn cane with its platinum, sapphire-eyed lion head; the slight drag of his bad leg; the wuffle of his closest companion, a scrappy yet fluffy little mutt known to humans as Pod. All those sounds, too, had become as dear as maddening to me by the time I’d graduated.

I leaned down and greeted the pup more cheerily. “Hullo, Pod, well met! Between you and me? This punch is vile, not like Dom Pérignon’s champagne at all.”

I chanced to look up at Lannister, whose expression was oddly both amused and pained. And then he caught my eye in his beguiling forested gaze, and I stood up straight, ready for…what? _How would you know anything about fine champagne, Tarth,_ my mind supplied.

“What have you been up to, Tarth?” he asked, and the sincerity in his face led me to reply honestly, rather than compose a snappy rejoinder as my usual interactions with him had conditioned me to do.

“Would you believe, long hours on the floor of my father’s factory. We switched over to war work in ’42, when I was still in school. Grenade parts, chiefly.”

“Ah, a shortage of performance roller skates for the troops’ R & R, then, but perhaps for the greater good,” he returned.

I stiffened, trying to suss whether he implied insult to the family business. From our factory on West Garfield Boulevard my father made the finest skates in the country. It wasn’t General Motors, but it was a living that suited us. Dad took good care of his employees, and we were like an extended family.

“Oh, stop scowling,” he chuckled. “I’m proud of you. It’s obviously a worthy cause. I know you’ll bring your incredible mind back to us when the war is over.”

I inclined my head in response to the rare compliment. At least I hoped it was a compliment. “Yes, Professor Tyrell has assured me I’ll be admitted to do graduate study with the Committee on Social Thought and continue as her research assistant.”

“That’s good,” he said quietly, and seemed at a loss for words. _Peculiar_ …very unlike him.

Pod sneezed. I set the cup of foul concoction on the low window ledge and picked him up for a long-overdue cuddle, looking into his soulful brown eyes. “Who’s a good boy?” I asked, in a low, soft voice I saved solely for the pup. OK, yes, I had missed him…them. I rubbed my face against his dear fur.

Was it a trick of the light, or did Lannister have a look of… _longing?_

“You have a run in your stocking.” Of course _he_ noticed. He must have been looking that direction when I bent to pick up Pod.

“Out of practice with such fripperies, I suppose?” he grinned, warming up. “Not that you ever were in practice, as I recall. Always striding up and down the halls in smart trousers, a one-woman force for knowledge. Now that I know what you’ve been up to, I will henceforth envision you in blue coveralls, hair tied up in a red kerchief, striding about the factory floor, a one-woman force for Victory.”

I shrugged at this speech and set down Pod, who was growing restless. He flopped at our feet contentedly as I plucked a stray bit of fur from my rayon bodice. “That’s about right.”

I don’t know what came over me, because then I added, “Come see for yourself. The address is in the ‘phone directory, on Garfield.”

“I shall,” he replied, looking pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chicago Roller Skate Company on West Garfield Boulevard switched to wartime production in both world wars: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/lifestyles/ct-sta-world-war-ii-chicago-documenary-st-1107-20171107-story.html
> 
> https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/elmhurst/community/chi-ugc-article-chicago-rink-rats-exhibit-showcases-the-gol-2018-06-27-story.html
> 
> More history on the real Chicago Roller Skate Co.: https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/single-post/2015/11/22/Metal-Roller-Skates-by-Chicago-Roller-Skate-Co-1914
> 
> A serviceman wrote about missing skating and the fact that the skate company wasn’t making them at the time: https://www.oldnewark.com/memories/sports/bodianskates.htm
> 
> The Committee on Social Thought: https://socialthought.uchicago.edu/page/about-committee


	4. Chapter 4

Someone changed the record and now Jo Stafford was playing. One of my very favorites.

 _Long ago and far away_  
_I dreamed a dream one day_  
_And now that dream is here beside me_  


Lannister tilted his ridiculously attractive face and smiled, bringing out the crinkles around his eyes I’d always tried not to notice. “Ah, Jo Stafford, lovely,” he said, then looked toward the few couples dancing and began humming along.

It hit me like a ton of bricks: he wasn’t one of my professors anymore, and he wouldn’t be again. I would be getting my next degree from a newly formed unit, and he wasn’t in it.

At last, I allowed myself to really take the man in.

He was wearing his customary impeccably polished brogue cap-toe boots, olive tweed trousers, and matching coat with leather elbow patches the same cognac color as his boots. Of course the coat had been perfectly tailored to fit his athletic shoulders.

One of his signature waistcoats encased his long torso, this one with a paisley pattern in rich reds, blues, olives, and silvers. As usual his shirt was open at the neck—I’d never seen him wear a tie, only ever the maroon cashmere scarf he had hanging at either side—and I could discern graying, dark-gold chest hair. The cords of his neck vibrated as he hummed.

His bronze hair was far longer than was fashionable, despite his otherwise natty appearance. His temples were graying, too, and I felt my hand begin to float up involuntarily.

I snapped my gaze down to his hands a second too late, as he turned that stubble-shadowed jaw, aquiline nose, and shocking pair of green eyes back to me.

Such beautiful hands, elegant yet masculine, with square fingertips and nails set just so. His hands were the one feature I’d let myself surreptitiously study over the years.

_Which reminded me._

“Jaime, I never returned the lucky fountain pen you loaned me for finals!” I clapped my hand over my mouth and felt my cheeks burning with embarrassment. It was exquisite, solid and surely very expensive, with a sapphire-enameled barrel and platinum-looking fittings, akin to the head of his walking stick. I kept it at my bedside and held it in my palm every night for awhile before turning out my lamp, but now that I was before him I realized I should have given it back.

He looked at me so seriously I wasn’t sure what he’d say next. “It was a gift, Brienne—it’s yours. It will always be _yours._ I’m sorry I hadn’t made that clear.” His voice was the gentlest I’d ever heard it.

“Oh,” I breathed.

He smiled once again and this time I let myself admire the creases at his eyes. “You look very fine tonight, if I may say. I know these aren’t your usual togs, but they suit you, too. And that shade of blue is your color,” he asserted. “Complements your exquisite eyes.”

_Oh._

Pod stood up and shook, tags jingling, breaking the moment.

“We…I haven’t asked…what have you been up to? I mean, I know your research, of course, but I’d like to hear about your part of the V-12 curriculum,” I babbled, trying to set my feet back on familiar ground.

He shook his head with a smirk. “Brienne, what I’d _really_ like to do is ask you to dance, but we both know my dancing days are over,” he rued.

“Not my forte, anyway. I’m better on skates,” I quickly replied.

He grinned at that. “And I would also like to catch up, run some ideas past you. I loathe dining at the Quad Club, but might you join me for some chowder and ale downstairs in the pub?”

“Yes, Jaime, I’d like that.” I took his proffered right arm and his left hand closed on the head of his stick. Pod wagged his tail so hard his whole little body shook, and we set off. I caught Marge’s eye. She beamed at me and gave a knowing wink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jo Stafford, Long Ago (and Far Away) (1944): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5FGrRqvFjE
> 
> So, The Pub in the basement of Ida Noyes wouldn’t have existed then. I took artistic license! In fact there was a “refectory” on the first floor at that time.


	5. Chapter 5

Reader, I married him.

We talked until the pub closed at midnight and he called for a cab. We talked in the cab. He and Pod took me to my front door and we talked some more, even though the cab was running on rationed gasoline, waiting to convey them home.

And then he removed his fedora and we didn’t talk at all.

The searching kisses we shared warmed me to the core despite the frigid night air. I couldn’t believe I was finally touching his face, albeit through my leather gloves. I think my toes curled. I do recall that I very much felt like a woman. A top scholar of lovemaking, my Jaime.

He came to the plant the following week and I showed him around. I introduced him to my dad, as there hadn’t been an opportunity at graduation, to our friend and foreman, Goodwin, and to the remaining workers in our factory family.

He took me out to dinner at wonderful little mom-and-pop places every Saturday. Sometimes I took long lunches and rode the bus down Garfield Boulevard to meet him for dime beers and lousy sandwiches at the Woodlawn Tap on 55th.

We took each other to our favorite bookshops and made out like teenagers amid the rabbit warrens of shelves. We went to jazz shows at the Green Mill and Sunday matinees at the Fine Arts.

We loved Bogey and Bacall in _To Have and Have Not_ in spite of ourselves.

One Sunday when Jaime’s brother Tyrion was visiting from Toronto, they had me over to supper on Dorchester Avenue. I remember that halcyon evening of wine, affection, and witty conversation still. I loved his home and knew it would be mine.

Spring finally came and he asked to see me skate, so I obliged, right there in the middle of the quads amid the crocus beds! Jaime was sitting on a bench and laughing at my spins and antics when Bronn strolled by, and that’s how I learned the two men were friends.

When his third quarter ended, right after V-E Day, we said our vows before a judge, accompanied by Dad, Tyrion, Margaery, Olenna, and Bronn. The snapshot from our little wedding luncheon at the Drake shows a handsome, golden, shaggy-haired, middle-aged man smiling rapturously at a striking young woman with glossy blonde waves, freckled pale skin, dark blue eyes, and ruby lips who is laughing uproariously. It seems she is me.

That autumn, when I was heading for the IC after attending an afternoon lecture at the Art Institute, a very fancy-looking man stopped me and offered his card, something about a modeling agency, Chicago, New York, Paris. I smiled politely, put it in my coat pocket, and more or less forgot about it.

Lannister refuses to retire, and I wouldn’t let him, anyway. A bored Jaime is an impossible Jaime, and I’m up to my ears serving as Philosophy department chair. Our twins Gal and Jo are in their first year of med school and too busy with their own studies and friends to keep their father entertained.

We had to say goodbye to dear Pod when the kids were young, and that was a terrible day. I don’t like to think of it. Jaime’s new companion, as we all still think of her—though she, too, is getting up there—is Circe, a preening little Yorkie he spoils rotten.

Sometimes, of an evening, we put on a Jo Stafford record and sway together in the middle of our living room, whispering to each other of our love story, of our great love.

 _The dream I dreamed was not denied me_  
_Just one look and then I knew_  
_That all I longed for long ago_  
_Was you_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most famous line from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, of course! This Brienne seems like she would know and use it.
> 
> Here’s a fun little film about Chicago ca. 1945–1946. The University of Chicago is featured at 11:40: https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/12/07/vintage-chicago-film-found-at-estate-sale-shows-1940s-era-city/
> 
> Jimmy bought the Woodlawn Tap in 1948 and everyone to this day calls it Jimmy’s. I’m not sure whether it was known as the Woodlawn Tap before 1948, so I again invoke artistic license! https://www.chibarproject.com/Reviews/WoodlawnTap/WoodlawnTap.htm
> 
> The Green Mill: http://greenmilljazz.com/. But of course Jimmy’s/Woodlawn has always hosted jazz, and so did many clubs on Chicago’s south side. I chose the Green Mill up north because it is more familiar to people (and quite lovely).
> 
> Fine Arts Theatre (now closed): https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-11-28-0011280232-story.html
> 
> The Drake Hotel: http://www.thedrakehotel.com/explore/history
> 
> The IC is the Illinois Central. One of its commuter lines ran from downtown through Hyde Park to parts southeast. Now it is a Metra line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad#Passenger_train_service
> 
> Thank you for reading. Blessed Yule!


End file.
